Today is a time of inbound marketing. You can’t just push your product or service towards a customer that doesn’t want it. In fact, lead generation continues to be one of the biggest issues faced by marketers. That is, perhaps, why a lot of marketers are turning to interactive content. In this blog, we will try to decode exactly how you can boost your lead generation rate with interactive content.
But more on that later. First, let’s have a look at what makes interactive content so special.
Why Interactive Content?
The world outside is full of information. It has become more and more important for the user to sift and filter through it to find relevant content. And interactive content makes sure that you can offer your audience just that.
1. Customer Engagement
87% of marketers agree that interactive content grabs more attention than static content. Interactive content differs from static content in the way that it requires customer participation. And this is what leads to customer engagement. From calculators to quizzes to interactive infographics, interactive content involves the customer in the entire process. Whether it is finding out which make up suits them best, or what their mortgage amounts to, the user gets all the say. Interactive content is merely a tool to give them the final answer. This attracts the customer and takes into account all the right information to give an accurate answer.
2. Customer Education Vs. Sales Pitch
Sales pitches don’t work anymore. You can talk all day about your product and your prospect won’t listen. Unless you can recognize your users’ problems and figure out how your product will solve it, nothing will work. Interactive content does just that.
Through content like quizzes and calculators, prospects can not only know what the product does but also how it solves their problem. Almost 94% of B2B buyers first research online before making a purchase decision. And interactive content is the perfect way to sway them to your side.
3. Relevant Consumer Data
Interactive content is a quick and cost-effective way of capturing user data. For example, you are an automobile company, and you embed a quiz for ‘What Does Your Dream Car Look Like?’. You can ask users relevant questions about their budget, their specifications, their preferences, etc. This will give you a deep insight into what your consumer is looking for. Now you can reach out to these users with options that will suit their needs without having to go through a dozen websites.
4. Qualified Lead Generation
Now what you came for, lead generation.
Interactive content does not only offer you lead generation but qualified lead generation. Time, money and effort – it’s important to use these in the right places. And that is exactly what interactive content does.
Interactive content helps you gather a fair idea of the lead through their responses. Later, you can check if they fit into your buyer persona. Interactive content also informs you whether pursuing them for conversion will be fruitful or not. If they’re below your budget range or are looking for something that you don’t offer, you can choose to eliminate them from your list of priority leads. This allows you to focus your time and resources on leads that have a higher chance of conversion.
How Does Interactive Content Help With Lead Generation?
Interactive content is like chocolate. It comes in many forms, and all of them equally good. Let’s look at some of the interactive content types and how you can use them to generate leads.
1. Calculators
The conversation about interactive content isn’t complete unless there are calculators. Calculators are a fun and simple way of escaping complicated calculations and getting the desired results.
Here’s an example of Kukun Home Intelligence, a home renovation company. They added a Kukun home remodeling cost calculator on their site. Users can input their preferences and get an estimated amount of how much it would cost them to refurbish their homes with Kukun Home Intelligence.
This calculator helps the company generate leads that are actually looking to make a change in their house. It also helps the users determine whether Kukun Home Intelligence would be a good fit for them or not based on their budget.
2. Quizzes And Assessments
Outcome quizzes and assessments are fun ways of generating leads in no time. Beyond how popular they are, quizzes also help gather information about your audience (like a gamified version of a survey.) Moreover, they can be used to educate prospects/leads on particular aspects of your product/service.
Outgrow, a B2B tool for interactive content helped Arquati gain over 73000 leads through a single outcome quiz! They created a quiz for ‘Which Kind Of Pergola Should You Build?. Arquati is an Italian brand that mainly aims at providing the best sun protection gear. This interactive content case study revealed that the quiz garnered over 1.3 million visits! Arquati was able to increase its customer engagement, lead generation, and website traffic all through one single piece of content.
They were able to gather information from their customers, pre-qualify leads and use the insights from this quiz to pursue more leads. It improved their customer experience and improved their brand image as well.
Another way quizzes can help you generate leads is through Assessments.
For example, if you’re a language institute that is looking for prospective students, you can use assessments to create language proficiency tests. These assessments will tell students which level they’re at and what kind of classes they should join. This will help you get qualified leads that are actually interested in learning the language.
3. Chatbots
Chatbots perform multiple functions. They engage your customers, generate leads and also help you with your customer support. Chatbots are often embedded on websites to greet customers and perform some pre-coded tasks, like answering FAQs, greeting users, etc. This improves customer experience and helps reduce cost and burden on personnel. A lot of work can be delegated to programmed chatbots to help collect leads.
For example, let’s assume you are a wedding management company. You can design a Wedding chatbot in order to deal with customers who are looking to plan a wedding. You can ask them questions like dates, budgets, preferences, and then offer a customized plan according to their needs.
This adds value to the user and increases their chances of not only giving their lead information but also of turning into a paying customer.
4. Giveaways And Contests
Giving rewards is always a good idea. Not many can say no to a free gift. Through giveaways, you can give rewards (preferable of your own brand) in the form of free products and services. Karl Kangur, founder of Business Media says: ‘People are more than likely to fill a simple generation form in exchange for a giveaway. You can also increase your social visibility by asking people to share your content. Giveaways are a great way of engaging customers as well.’
Furthermore, they provide an incentive to your customers in return for increasing your customer base. Giveaways are a cost effective way of increasing brand awareness and marketing! You only have to factor in the cost of the prize, the marketing channel and the time you spend on the process. This builds a more trustworthy image of your company and your name. And at the same time, you get to have more direct communication with your users.
Conclusion
Of course, the list doesn’t end here. There are a lot more types of interactive content than you can read about in a few minutes’ time. But fear not, interactive content will help you, no matter in what form. It is one of the most reliable, low cost and easy ways to engage your customers and improve their experience. Interactive content is simply a win-win situation for everybody. So go ahead and give it a spin!
man using tablet -DepositPhotos
